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Pruitt - in or out?

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#104

No surprise here…secret calendar to hide the work Pruitt does for the Energy Companies. What a piece of work…

EPA staffers met routinely in Pruitt’s office to “scrub,” alter or remove from Pruitt’s official calendar numerous records because they might “look bad,” according to Kevin Chmielewski, Pruitt’s former deputy chief of staff for operations, who attended the meetings.

A CNN review which compared Pruitt’s public calendar with internal EPA schedules and emails shows more than two dozen meetings, events or calls were omitted from his public calendar.

(CNN) EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and his aides have kept “secret” calendars and schedules to overtly hide controversial meetings or calls with industry representatives and others, according to a former EPA official who is expected to soon testify before Congress. A review of EPA documents by CNN found discrepancies between Pruitt’s official calendar and other records.

A CNN review which compared Pruitt’s public calendar with internal EPA schedules and emails shows more than two dozen meetings, events or calls were omitted from his public calendar.

Chmielewski said that some interactions were intentionally removed from Pruitt’s calendar after they occurred, such as meetings in June 2017 between Pruitt and Cardinal George Pell, who was charged weeks later with multiple historical charges of sexual offenses. Pell has pleaded not guilty.

“We would have meetings what we were going to take off on the official schedule. We had at one point three different schedules. One of them was one that no one else saw except three or four of us,” Chmielewski told CNN. “It was a secret … and they would decide what to nix from the public calendar.”

Chmielewski says he was forced to leave the EPA in February after raising questions about Pruitt’s spending and management.

If the allegations are true, the practice of keeping secret calendars and altering or deleting records of meetings could violate federal law as either “falsifying records” or hiding public records, according to legal experts interviewed by CNN.

“If somebody changed, deleted, scrubbed a federal record with the intent of deceiving the public or intent of deceiving anybody, it could very well be a violation of federal law,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission.

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#105

@dragonfly9 Thanks for posting this article about Pruitt’s clandestine calendar. You were also on the case back in May when you shared these documents showing how Pruitt hid his meeting with the controversial Cardinal Pell by maintaining two schedules during his trip to Italy: one public, one private. CNN’s exposé today has established that this was not an isolated case – just the opposite, it’s standard operating procedure for Pruitt who has created a culture of corruption at the EPA.

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#106

VIgilante style protests…now commonplace. We won’t normalize these thugs.

Woman confronts Pruitt at restaurant, tells him to resign http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/AAzv3RD?ocid=st

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#107

Beyond belief is what it is…the more that is exposed, and lack of firing resigning is just horrid.

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#108
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#109

Bu- Bye.

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#110

YES!!! :smile: finally!!!

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#111

And up to bat next is…

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#112

:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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#113

Telfonated, ‘high self-regard’ ‘only resigned b/c he was making the Prez look bad,’ ‘and Laura Ingraham/fox turned on him’ - what news reporters (msnbc) are saying about him.

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#114

For The Atlantic writer, Elaina Plott, she’s been really expecting that Pruitt to leave certainly by April. She talks about the staff dealing with Pruitt’s continuous unethical tactics and about the morale facing this group.

For me the most galling if that Pruitt felt that he’d be the perfect candidate for Jeff Sessions job, but as we can tell from his resignation letter, Pruitt felt a certain God given place to work within the T administration. It looks as though he certainly felt that he was doing good work, despite all the accusations swirling around him.

“You’d just wake up every day holding your breath, wondering what would drop next,” one of the former officials recalled. “I felt like I could never get through to him. Even as one of his top advisers, I would tell him, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that.’ It didn’t matter—he would not heed counsel. At a certain point, you reach your limits as a staffer with what you feel you can accomplish.”

Some officials relied on humor to ease tension and speed along the workdays. On May 1, Axios’s Jonathan Swan reported that a “suspicious package” had been found on the second floor of EPA’s headquarters. “The floor has been locked down and a Hazmat team is on its way,” he wrote.

I texted an official with a link to the tweet and got an immediate response. “The inter-office joke was that we finally found Pruitt’s ethics training manual,” the source said. (The suspicious package was later revealed to be a box of fruit.)

A sense of malaise seemed to grip the EPA in the weeks leading up to Pruitt’s resignation. One former official told me they’d struggled emotionally with how to navigate an unrelenting “sense of purposelessness.”

#115

File under read all viewpoints - from the WSJ’s Editorial Board about how the Progressives got their man, Pruitt out. It helps to understand what logic is involved with these statements.

> "The shame is that Mr. Trump is losing his bravest deregulator."

> "EPA is the Holy Sepulchre of progressive politics, and Mr. Pruitt posed an existential threat to command and control regulation that is the hallmark of the left’s environmental agenda."

Boils down to giving credence to economic savings & gains (see fracking, see pipelines greenlit, see lands/oceans open for oil drilling etc) rather than environmental, and why do we need these pesky regulations they are wondering.

Because there are serious and undeniable environmental issues at stake.

Opinion Review & Outlook

Pruitt Drowns in the Swamp
The permanent green government takes out Trump’s deregulator.

By The Editorial Board
July 5, 2018 7:44 p.m. ET
Chalk one up for the swamp. The permanent progressive state finally ran Scott Pruitt out of the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, and the tragedy is that Mr. Pruitt gave his enemies so much ammunition.

President Trump announced on Twitter Thursday afternoon that he had accepted Mr. Pruitt’s resignation. Mr. Pruitt cited the “unrelenting attacks on me personally” and his family that have “taken a sizable toll on us all.” He’s right about unrelenting. Dozens of reporters have examined every furl of Mr. Pruitt’s forehead since he started the job.

Press dispatches have suggested that he misused private air travel, sent staff on personal errands and bought $1,560 pens, among dozens of other allegations. Mr. Pruitt says most of this was false or exaggerated, and no doubt much of it was. He’s also right that billionaires Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg were out to get him. You can add the EPA bureaucracy that leans left, the green lobby entwined with it, and their collaborators in the press corps.

But this is not news, or it shouldn’t have been to Mr. Pruitt, who claimed to understand he was the biggest political target in the Administration after President Trump. EPA is the Holy Sepulchre of progressive politics, and Mr. Pruitt posed an existential threat to command and control regulation that is the hallmark of the left’s environmental agenda.

Mr. Pruitt had to avoid even the hint of an ethical question, and he should have been walking around Federal Triangle handcuffed to a general counsel. Of particular odor were the claims that Mr. Pruitt used his official position to help his wife find work or even open a Chick-fil-A franchise. The daily assault undermined his effectiveness and ultimately his support at the White House.

The shame is that Mr. Trump is losing his bravest deregulator. Mr. Pruitt started to roll back the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan that attempted to re-engineer the economy with little effect on climate change. He clamped down on the “sue and settle” racket that allows environmental groups to impose policy through consent degrees. He moved to redefine the Waters of the United States rule that let EPA regulate ponds and potholes. Mr. Pruitt also sought to require more honest cost-benefit analysis, and he updated advisory science boards that have been stacked with members who receive EPA grants.

Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler will take over, though acting directors are inherently transitional and thus less powerful. Then again, Mr. Wheeler may be there a while: Senate Democrats would block the Dalai Lama to run EPA if Mr. Trump nominated him.

Fresh off its Pruitt defenestration, the left will be looking for new targets, so some advice to the rest of the Trump cabinet: Fly coach.

#116

Funny because this is exactly how I feel about Trump.

And for a smile see this.

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#117

It took three months but he is out. My questions:

  1. What awful thing is about to come out that caused DearLeader to invite him to resign
  2. No more bullet proof seats and 24/7 taxpayer paid security - is he huddled in his bunker shaking with fear?
#118

Bloomberg just suggested that it was the used mattress from a Trump hotel that was the final scandal that was too much for this President.

I’m just going to believe that this is a true fact.
:joy::joy::joy:

An early June disclosure that a top EPA aide helped Pruitt try to buy a used mattress from the Trump International Hotel was particularly embarrassing to the president, one of the people said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-06/pruitt-said-to-have-been-told-to-resign-in-call-from-white-house

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#119

Seems someone in the WH is searching for these nut cases instead of vetting their backgrounds. They scored big with Pruitt and Manafort. I think T brings out the extreme personalities.

#120

@joshdorsey (WaPo)
What’s Scott Pruitt up to? He’s having breakfast at the Four Seasons Maui in Hawaii, per Playbook.

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#121

Too little…too late

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#122

Scott Pruitt’s current job title and some of his past behavior is highlighted here. Making the coal industry rich seems to be his happy place.

For the next stage of his career, Pruitt has tapped the industry connections he cultivated during his year and-a-half as a Cabinet member, according to four individuals briefed on his plans, as he works to make his way in the private sector and establish his own consulting business.

Pruitt is promoting coal exports and doing other work for his longtime friend, coal baron Joseph W. Craft III, while offering himself as an energy consultant and paid speaker, said several friends and associates, who asked for anonymity to speak frankly.

In an interview, Pruitt’s lawyer Cleta Mitchell confirmed that he was pursuing those activities, noting that his predecessor, Gina McCarthy, also works as a paid speaker. But she said Pruitt will not violate a five-year ban on lobbying the EPA.

“He has discussed multiple opportunities with me and has been quite careful not to do anything that is even close to the line - and to ensure he is in full compliance with both the letter and the spirit of the law,” she said.

Mitchell said it makes sense for Pruitt — who had not held a job in the private sector since he was elected as Oklahoma’s attorney general eight years ago — to seek work in an area he knows plenty about. “He was named EPA administrator because of his vast expertise and knowledge in the field — the field of energy and the environment and the regulatory process,” she said.

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#123

An update on Cardinal Pell.

Cardinal George Pell has been found guilty and is set to be jailed for child sexual abuse in the most sensational verdict since the Catholic Church became engulfed in worldwide abuse scandals.

Pell, who was Vatican treasurer, close to the Pope and the most senior Catholic figure in the world to be charged by police with child sex offences, has been found guilty of orally raping one choirboy and molesting another in Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathedral 22 years ago.


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